Labyrinth

by Kat Richardson

  Nearly every building in Pioneer Square has a basement or two, and most have a door that leads into the underground—the network of abandoned sidewalks that ring the buildings at what was once street level. The downside is that there’s no way to cross the street without coming up to the surface. I had to assume Goodall had some more of Wygan’s asetem with him and they’d be spread out around the street—what else did they have to do now that their Pharaohn’s big night was at hand but roll up the competition? I’d have to come up where I could check for them before they could see me. That would mean the staircase by the old record store.

  Bud’s Jazz Records had been in the basement near Temple Billiards for ages, but it had finally given in to declining sales and closed its doors. Now the old space was empty and I’d spent enough time in the underground with Quinton to know where the original back door was. It would be locked and alarmed, but at that moment, I didn’t care if I pulled in every cop in the district. It was pretty likely I’d get out before anyone arrived, but even if I didn’t, there’s little more secure from most bad guys than being surrounded by pissed-off patrolmen. Suicidal villains are a different problem, but I didn’t think Goodall or his asetem friends were willing to trade themselves for me just yet. They might be if they didn’t get me to Wygan tonight, but I didn’t plan to miss that party; I just meant to arrive my own way. I didn’t know what that was going to be, but I’d figure it out when I stopped running for my life.

  I skidded around a corner on the filth of a hundred years’ neglect and slammed into a set of steel construction doors. Someone was doing work in the underground, and to secure the area from people just like me, they’d put up a barrier. Damn it! I didn’t hear anyone behind me, but that meant nothing. I was humped.

  Except that I wasn’t. I was a Greywalker, and this was about as Grey as Seattle got: the depths of the old city where ghosts were as common as dirt and the layers of time slid and chimed over one another like slices of broken glass. I started to put my hand out by habit to feel for the temporaclines, but I didn’t need to. The bright glow of the grid as I now saw it turned the ripples of time into colored banners fluttering horizontally in an uncanny wind. And I didn’t need to slide onto one; I simply reached and it bent. I stepped through.

  It was a miserable day I’d picked: pouring rain, the streets so muddy that cart horses bogged in it up to their fetlocks and had to be hauled up onto the wooden sidewalks while their wagons were cut free to sink until someone could come back for the goods. The ghosts of the early shopkeepers paid me no attention at all as they tried to save their stock of one kind or another. I slogged through the phantom mud, which felt as slimy and sticky as the real thing, to the waterfront and down the length of Yesler’s wharf toward the sawmill. The old dock area had long ago been filled in and made into the land on which the current waterfront and Alaskan Way stood within inches of the old level. That would be well out of the zone any of the Pharaohn’s henchmen would be watching and safe enough to appear in. I’d never exited a temporacline below the present world’s street level and I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I did.

  I stumbled a little as I came out not far from Rice House Antiques. The warehouse was locked up for the night, even the red London phone box tucked away inside. I checked to be sure I wasn’t wearing the haunting of hundred-year-old mud and crossed the street to the ferry terminal. A few lonely cabs stood at the curb waiting for anyone returning on foot from Bremerton or the islands. I got in one and directed the driver to the Westin Hotel. It’s a big building near TPM, but not so near that you can see it from there, and I thought I could find a place to lurk long enough to figure out my next move.

  And call Quinton to let him know I wasn’t dead yet.

  THIRTY-TWO

  My phone buzzed as I walked into the Westin lobby. I didn’t stop to look at the number, I just opened it up and answered. “Quinton?” “H-Harper?” The voice was shaking so hard the word barely came out, but I still recognized the speaker.

  “Will?”

  “Run . . .” he started, but his voice trailed away as someone else snatched the phone. “ ’Ello there . . . ‘little girl.’ It appears your friend ’as dropped by to play. . . .”

  I swore. “Haven’t you had enough fun torturing that man, Wygan? You won’t get anything from him and his mind’s already too broken to be much good.”

  “Oh, but there is still blood in ’im and, as you say, the fun of it. And of course there is your father. . . .”

  “Why hold on to him? He’s dead. How much satisfaction can you get from tormenting a ghost?”

  “Not enough, that’s true. They really are somewhat unsatisfac’try. But you do ’ave quite a few other friends. I’m not overfond of witches, so I might take a particular delight in the anguish of that cozy little family. They are quite nearby. . . .”

  Broadcast tower. That’s where they were. The idea came into my head illuminated by another: I still had a back door. Wherever Wygan was, the ghost of my father was nearby, which meant that the door opened to within a few feet of the Pharaohn. It was behind a barrier in the Grey, but I thought my current affinity for the grid might allow me to tear through that barrier. I just had to get close enough to use it unseen and I could step out almost on top of him. Then I would have Carlos to help me destroy the Pharaohn for good.

  “That’s enough,” I said. “I’m coming.”

  “Ah, good. I knew you’d want to play your part.”

  “What I want is to rip your head off.” And I did, but it had a distant, intellectual kind of appeal at that moment. I didn’t feel the burn of hate I would have expected, just a clear, steel-strong certainty that he needed to be removed from existence. Now.

  “I suspect you shall be disappointed.”

  “I don’t think so.” I hung up on him. It was a small, cold satisfaction, but at least it was mine. I wasn’t completely lost to humanity yet.

  I called Quinton again, cutting in the moment he answered. “I’m all right. I slipped Goodall but I have to go stop Wygan—”

  “No, you don’t! He can’t force you. If you don’t cooperate, he can’t get what he wants.”

  “I don’t intend to cooperate, but I can’t let him hurt people. He has Will, he is threatening the Danzigers, and you know what he will do once he has his way. He has to be stopped for good. What’s happening to me is almost finished. If it goes on to the end, I believe I will . . . I’ll just disappear into the grid. It is pulling on me, singing me into it, and my ability to remain separate is failing. My father suggested there’s a way to stop that, but putting an end to the Pharaohn is the only chance I may have. And the only thing that matters. You said someone’s not coming out of this alive. I would rather choose who and how this ends than hope for the best.”

  “Harper, don’t—”

  “He’s somewhere around broadcast tower two—maybe the park or the buildings nearby—and so is Goodall. You’ll know when you spot it. But don’t come too soon: The cops wouldn’t like what they’d see.”

  I wasn’t being entirely truthful: I wasn’t going there to save Will or anyone else, not myself, not even my father. That would be nice, but I no longer had the luxury of pity, or even the fleeting sense of it, and that wasn’t what was moving me toward the towers on Queen Anne Hill. This had been my intention since London: to destroy that which had manipulated and ruined my life. Now the need was greater than me and mine. Gwen had been right to call me ruthless. In the dispassionate influence of the grid, compassion—perhaps humanity—had died in me. Only the job remained: Paladin of the Dead, Hands of the Guardian.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Of course I couldn’t just walk into the monster’s lair and give myself up to whatever he had in mind. I had given Goodall the slip, but that didn’t make me much safer here; Wygan meant me no good either. Another taxi dropped me off near the towers, and I walked through the shining Grey to the screen of shrubs near the old gym buildings, searching for a blind spot th
at was near enough to fall within the compass of the labyrinth. When I found it, I opened the ghostly door, but I didn’t step through.

  I pulled the tin that had contained Simondson’s ghost out of my pocket and opened it up, dumping the last bright thread from it. “Come here.”

  The troubled red mass that remained of him materialized with a crackle of sound. I stared into it, not bothering with the normal view of the world. In the middle of the red threads and black shadow of death, I could just spot a bit of bright blue energy. I thrust my hand into the cold light of him and groped for the burning red torment that struck through that blue luminescence, disregarding the howl of shock he gave as I did. When I caught the hard strand that I wanted, feeling it only remotely as it seared into my palm, I looked toward where his face would have been. To me it was the thinnest mist now, barely a face at all.

  “Shut up. In a moment I’m going to pull this. Then you’ll be free. You might go immediately to wherever it is the remnants of the living go, or you might stay—I don’t know. But if you do linger, do me a favor: Go to the man who killed you and wreak screaming havoc.” I pointed toward the broadcast tower with my free hand. “He’s in there somewhere.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply; I just yanked the scorching knot of energy loose and tore it apart. I saw the ghost streak away into the yellow wire frame of the broadcast tower, a blue comet trailing a cloud of blackness that turned suddenly and dove into the tangled skein of the earth below us.

  I didn’t care which way Simondson had gone. I’d be there soon enough. I turned and stepped through the misty doorway into the labyrinth. Then I started running toward my father, down the ethereal corridors that twisted on themselves as I went, tangling behind me into snake’s coils and endless tesseracts of empty space. I kept to the left, always, just like the classical labyrinth, turning counterclockwise until I came to the center.

  My father moaned, thinner and less material than ever, half-embedded in the wall. “You’re too late, little girl. There’s something loose already.”

  “That’s just a friend of mine, making an entrance. You know they can’t start the wedding without the bride.”

  “Perhaps you should run. . . .”

  “Everyone keeps telling me that, but I’m done with it. You screwed up. You didn’t stop him. I will. But you, Dad . . . your job is to stop me. Before I disappear into this forever. Can you?”

  He sobbed, his eyes hidden behind the opaque memory of his glasses. “Only—only if you die, little girl. And I don’t know what will happen to you; if you live, you’ll still be a Greywalker, but not like this.” He writhed and churned in the wall of tormented ghosts. “I can’t do this! I can’t let them hurt you: You’re my child!”

  “You have to. Because I am your daughter. I always loved you, Dad, but you owe me, and I don’t want to be like this. If I die here, you can make me better. Come on, Dad. Be my guardian angel one last time.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to waffle or worry. I reached past him, reached for the walls, for the ghost substance that hid this cell from the rest of the Grey, and plunged my hands into it. It was easier than the walls of Edward’s bunker. It felt softer than Carlos’s body and gave way with more ease, tearing into silver shards as the grid lamented and blazed bright through the falling walls of the labyrinth. The tumbling Grey flashed and burned, loosening the ghost of my father from his prison as the phantom structure crumbled away.

  I emerged into a room I had never seen before but which was unpleasantly like Carlos’s cellar, marked in swirls and rings of magic, but these were indigo and black, looping together into three smaller circles within a larger one. At the center of the circles, a shard of suspended temporacline glittered like ice. Colored lights flickered in sconces at the corners of the room—lights to confuse and keep the Guardian Beast at bay. Behind me, I could feel the slipping, unraveling presence of my father as a passing breeze that could not last long. But he was there.

  I took in the rest of the room at a glance. Will, waxy pale and bloodstained, huddled in a corner, weeping, with the colors of his aura a shattered mess of violence and fear streaked with smoke-black. Carlos was several feet away from Will, restraining a wasted and half-mad Edward who struggled weakly toward the terrified man with his eyes staring and fangs exposed as if the skin of his face had shrunken away. Wygan, his twisted white snake shape more prominent than ever, waited on the other side of the joined circles, closest to me and farthest from Carlos. Goodall was turning in tight arcs, swiping at the trailing coil of black that swirled around him in furious rushes. It seemed I had interrupted the preliminary stages.

  Sometimes the solution to a problem is simple. I didn’t think this would be, but I would be a fool not to take an opportunity that presented itself. I strode to Wygan, drawing the HK from under my jacket and squeezing the cocking lever as I shoved the muzzle up under the Pharaohn’s ophidian chin. He started turning toward me. He was huge in this form and I had to reach high to press the barrel into his skin. The gun seemed laughably small and inadequate as I pulled the trigger.

  The shot exploded against the ceiling, raining glass and concrete on us as the illusion of the massive snake collapsed. The smaller, corporeal Wygan rammed his fist into my chest, shoving me backward.

  I fell into a crouch, my ribs aching and breathing difficult, and launched myself at him.

  He whipped aside as quick as his illusory form. Then he snapped out a hand and caught me by the neck. Squeezing until my vision dimmed and my fingers went limp, he pulled me around to face him and shoved me to my knees. The grid roared in my head, calling for me. The pistol tumbled out of my grip and skittered across the floor.

  He let up only enough to keep me breathing and the noise receded a little. “Dramatic entrance, Greywalker. I admit I did not expect it. You’re full of surprises.”

  Without any apparent effort, he dragged me toward Goodall and snatched the fluttering remains of Simondson from the air. He shook the black shroud away and consumed the dimming blue light that remained of the ghost.

  Panting with annoyance, Goodall glowered pure hate at me. Then he punched me and pushed me backward so I tumbled and sprawled into the closest circle. He slapped his hand down on the edge of the lines and spat out a word. The dark blue cage of the circle flashed upward, surrounding me. In the hum of the circle the grid rose in burning voices and smears of misty color.

  I could almost touch it . . . the gleaming stuff just beyond the circle. But the whispered voices counseled patience. I’d have a better chance to destroy Wygan if I just waited a few minutes, let him think me weak or stunned. . . .

  Outside the rushing sound of the indigo circle, Goodall still glared murder at me, but the Pharaohn wasn’t interested in the petty anger of his ushabti. “Start it,” he commanded. “We have the gateway,” he said, gesturing to me. “Now bring the Beast.”

  Goodall shook himself and turned to flick off the colored lights, leaving the room bathed in only the diffused cones of work lights far above that glittered on the substance of the Grey like dust motes. Then the screaming started in the grid and a sound like a train bearing down with failing brakes came from the air overhead. I remembered that last sound from two years before in the burning disaster of the Madison Forrest House: the shriek of the Guardian Beast, enraged and rushing to destroy a threat to its domain. Colors flickered and surged in the hot lines beneath the city. Without the colored lights to confuse it, the Guardian saw its enemy and the razor-edge of destruction he represented for the Grey’s thin barrier that kept the worlds of the normal and the paranormal apart and safe from one another. It could not care about any threat to itself; it only came on.

  I remembered what my father had said: call it, trap it, kill it. As I stared into the grid, I got the whole shape of the plan. I was the gateway into the trap, a bridge between the normal world and the Grey; Carlos was the knife; and Wygan himself both bait and replacement. My living connection to both realms would hold the door open be
tween them while Wygan caught and destroyed the Guardian, leaving the things of the Grey free to rush out into the normal world. But what would compel the Beast into the trap . . . ? I studied the shape of the magic circle, looking for the way to ruin Wygan’s plans, to use any moment where he might be vulnerable as he threw off one form and strove toward the next. I couldn’t resist the grid’s pull, but I might be able to reshape it to my own purpose. . . .

  The Pharaohn glanced at Carlos. “Speak, Ataíde. Bring the Beast here for slaughter.”

  I had never heard that word before—was it an insult or a name? Carlos narrowed his eyes but said nothing, gave no clue. I thought Wygan was going to strike him, but he reined in his temper, stepped around the necromancer, and crouched down next to Edward.

  “Order it done, Kammerling.” Wygan didn’t know Carlos was no longer bound to Edward. But I was still unsure what further role Edward might have. . . . Carlos could defy Wygan, but he wouldn’t do it yet.

  Distracted by his need for blood, Edward had difficulty pulling his attention from Will. His voice was a cracked whisper. “I call my own death if I do.” That puzzled me. Unless Wygan shattered the already broken tie between them, Carlos would be bound to defend Edward from whatever threatened—including Wygan or the Guardian Beast. Surely Edward knew the connection of the knife was broken. But perhaps some older bond still clung between them. . . .

  “You’re dying as it is. But you could go more comfortably. . . .” Wygan stepped across the gap in the circle to Will and grabbed ahold of his nearest extremity. He began dragging Will, feetfirst and screaming and thrashing at the floor with his crabbed hands, toward the fallen vampire Prince.

  Will’s terror galvanized me for a moment and I jolted against the magical barrier, ready to rip it apart and go save Will—the voices screaming at me to wait, wait, wait—but Carlos spoke and stopped me.